Hunter talents
Starting at level 10, a Hunter can begin spending talent points to gain new abilities and spells, strengthen existing abilities, and specialize how he/she functions. See the entry on Talents for more information about the Talent system. Hunters train in three schools: Beast Mastery, Marksmanship, and Survival. The Beast Mastery tree focuses on increasing the damage capabilities and survivability of a hunter's pet. The Marksmanship tree focuses on increasing the damage dealt by and mana efficiency of a hunter's shots. The Survival tree offers tools to aid in a hunter's survival, and extra utility to the group and raid. For an in depth analysis of all of the talents please see the Hunter talent analysis article. PLEASE NOTE: These talents have changed extensively in Patch 3.0.2. The following information may not be applicable to the live game, even where the talent names are the same. Beast Mastery Key talents * Improved Aspect of the Hawk If you are involved in end-game raiding, then this talent can significantly increase your damage output over lengthy combat durations as auto shots are always fired in all shot rotations. This is definitely the case in raid instances such as Black Temple and Sunwell Plateau, where high sustained DPS is crucial towards the success of a boss encounter. Note that in normal PvE, this talent is not quite as useful, but provides a solid DPS increase. It offers little or even no benefit for PvP as you must be able to fire successful auto shots consistently in order for this talent to proc and this is certaintly not possible if you get enemies within your deadzone constantly or getting crowd controlled. * Endurance Training The 15% boost to your pet's health can greatly boost your pet's survivability in both PvP and PvE; it can potentially help it endure an additional two or three damaging hits or ticks before dying. * Thick Hide Reduces the physical damage your pet takes in battle. Really pays off when you are faced with two or more opponents that deal heavy melee damage as it will help your pet take much less damage. This combined with Endurance Training can save you mana from having to heal your pet as often. * Unleashed Fury Increases your pet's damage which also pays off in increasing its ability to maintain aggro. * Improved Mend Pet A must-have for any long term Hunter. The ability to remove a range of debuffs from your pet reduces your downtime and boosts your pet's survivability in fights where annoying DoTs are applied to everyone. * Ferocity The added critical strike chance will greatly improve your pet's damage output which automatically means better threat generation and its ability to maintain aggro. * Intimidation A great means of interrupting spell casters and also for biding you and your pet some time to recover or inflict damage without taking any yourself. This spell also works well if your pet needs to steal aggro away from you or from casters in your party as intimidation causes a high amount of threat. Finally, while this is a primarily PvE talent, the stun aspect can make a difference in PvP encounters. * Bestial Discipline Enables your pet to regenerate twice as much focus per tick, thus letting it use it specials and growl more often which leads to a higher damage output. * Frenzy Another solid talent for greatly increasing your pet's damage output. Also great against casters, as it will put pressure on them when your pet is frenzied and keeps interrupting their casting. * Serpent's Swiftness One of the "core" DPS increasing talents in the tree. Passive 20% white DPS to you and your pet. Scales incredibly well, and provides a significant damage boost. Is worth about a 10-15% DPS increase when 5 points are spent here. Note that it is not a straight, direct 20% DPS increase because special attacks such as Multi-Shot and Arcane Shot are unaffected by this talent. * Bestial Wrath and The Beast Within These two talents combined together makes Beast mastery Hunters the bane of casters and healers in PvP, as well as provides significant dps boost in PvE. 18 seconds are more than enough for an uncrowd-controllable hunter and his pet to kill any unwary caster/healer. It can also be activated to break any CC on your pet. In raids, use it as often as possible and if possible, combine it with a trinket such as Bloodlust Brooch for a high damage output in fights. Marksmanship Key talents * Improved Concussive Shot This talent extends the daze effect of Concussive Shot by 2 seconds. It provides the opportunity to kite your opponent or run away from them. Essential PVP talent. Much less useful in late-game PvE, and nearly useless in raiding, as many high-level mobs are immune to stun effects. * Lethal Shots Straight DPS upgrade. Coupled with Mortal Shots, is almost essential. * Aimed Shot Also the essential means of taking down spell casters quickly with a huge upfront punch. * Rapid Killing Decent in both PvP and PvE, although more so in PvP. The cooldown reduction on Rapid Fire is good, and the 20% damage buff increases the punch on any opener you throw within a reasonable timeframe. (Note: still procs off mobs that would yield experience if you are level-capped, also procs off PvP NPCs that grant neither XP nor honour) * Mortal Shots A must-have for almost any Hunter. The 30% buff to your critical hits applies to all of your shots as well, significantly increasing your DPS. Also one of the primary reasons to pick up Aimed Shot, which has only limited utility after 2.0. * Readiness Resets cooldown on all Hunter abilities. Commonly overlooked, this is a panic button that gives the Hunter redundancy. If you have a mob locked with freeze trap and draw an add, you can hit Readiness and drop another trap to freeze the add. If Feign Death is initially resisted, you can hit Readiness for another roll of the dice. In long fights, you can also use Rapid Fire once, then Readiness, and Rapid Fire again. It can also be used against difficult or larger mobs. Immolation Trap, draw the mob to the trap, Readiness, jump forward, drop Snake Trap on mob, feign to drop aggro from traps, jump back, and commence shooting. * Trueshot Aura A bonus the hunter can provide his groupmates with. Rogues, DPS warriors and beast mastery/survival spec hunters will love you for this. * Master Marksman Necessary to get the much-needed Silencing Shot as well as give a significant boost to your overall DPS - as marksmanship has more use in PVE than beast mastery, this is essential to obtain the high DPS needed for tougher mobs Survival Key talents * Expose Weakness Hands down the best talent of all the hunter trees. It boosts Physical AP of all raid members (not just party) by 25% of the hunter's agility. This is what draws end-game hunters to the SV tree. The only downside is that it requires 600-700 agility to become truly effective for the raid. Bringing one SV hunter to raid is almost the equivalent of bringing a 26th DPSer, if your raid is heavily melee oriented. This talent is the key to the SV tree for raiders. * Hawk Eye +6 yard range should not be underestimated: It gives hunters the best range of any class in the game. Although the advantage of this in PvP should hopefully be self-explanatory, the benefit of this skill in solo PvE is primarily due to Survival's damage being crit based. As such, even after the pet loses aggro, with this skill, if a Hunter begins at maximum range from their target, they should still be able to kill the target before it reaches melee range. * Improved Wing Clip This talent allows you a possible root to make range on your target and also getting in one or two hits with your melee weapon before getting some distance to the mob. * Surefooted You get both a boost to your chance to hit as well as the possibility of negating root effects. The +hit won't show on the character sheet, but Hunters with this talent can safely choose more gear without the +hit stat. Somewhere around 3-4% more will be needed if you do high-end raiding - while Hunters without this talent need around 6-8% depending on which instances/raids the Hunter does. * Killer Instinct Increasing the critical strike chance of all your attacks is key - especially with the Expose Weakness talent. * Counterattack Cannot be avoided by your opponent, but you can miss. It will root your target and does damage all after you successfully parry attack. :Note: Deflection is a must-have talent if you plan on getting counterattack. * Lightning Reflexes A 3-15% increase in Agility. This talent is the backbone of a dedicated Survival Hunter's ranged damage. Agility is the primary stat needed to make use of Survival; it provides attack power, %crit, %dodge, and armour. It also allows one of the best dps debuffs in WoW - Expose Weakness. * Wyvern Sting Originally the trademark Survival talent. Wyvern's strength isn't primarily as an extended duration form of crowd control, but rather as an initial opening stun or surprising move which can throw an opponent off-guard, and also leaves the Hunter free to perform a follow up sequence of attacks. While it can also be used as a fail safe in the event that a freeze trap fails, this is risky, and requires that the non-crowd controlled target(s) in a given scenario be killed quickly. If used in addition to a freeze trap, this makes a Survival hunter one of few who can crowd control up to three mobs at the same time. In solo PvE, Wyvern is primarily used to buy time. In a fight against two caster mobs for example where the Hunter is currently focused on killing one but is being shot by the other, the second mob can be shot with Wyvern to allow the Hunter time to kill the first mob without continuing to be shot themselves by the second. :Note: This ability, when combined with Freezing traps allows a hunter to leave 3 mobs out of combat instead of one or two. Initially, the hunter lays a Freezing trap and waits a bit for the cooldown of traps. Then pull group regularly or open with wyvern - wyvern can now be shot in combat which makes it a lot more useful, so one generally likes to wait with that shot. The first mob to chase the hunter gets trapped. Then put a new freezing trap down a little away from the first trapped mob and if you didn't open with wyvern sting you now shoot one to sleep and let the third mob run into the last trap. With improved traps you should now have three mobs CC´ed for approx 27, 23 and 12 seconds. Then start your kiting and spam new traps as the old one breaks. Remember that if you feign death you will reset all aggro, so be sure they won't cause problems for the rest of the group/raid. Talents added in patch 3.0.2 Talent discussion '' Factual information on specific talents should be added to the specific talent page'' '' Discussion on Strengths and Weaknesses should be saved for the Hunter Talent Discussion section'' See also * Hunter Talents calculator at the Official site * Hunter Talent calculator at Wowhead Category:Hunter talents